Introduction: Creating Brush Tips from a Bitmap

In this short tutorial we will learn how to make brushes from existing images. These brushes can be used to add detail in your work or to create entirely new images. Below is the image we will attempt to create to use as a brush:

1. Choosing and Preparing the Source

Generally you can create a brush from any image file but you at least want to create something reusable with some transparency and some clean edges so it will integrate nicely in other works. For this tutorial we are going to try to create a "bullet hole" brush and here is our source file:

Now that we have our source file we need to get it ready to be converted into a brush. Brush tips will always be converted to grayscale if you try to create one from a full color source. We are going to go ahead and convert ours to grayscale so we can tune a few things ourselves:

2. Adjusting the Source (Curves)

Now lets use curves to adjust our grayscale image. On the menu select: Image> Adjustments> Curves or hit [Ctrl+M] for a shortcut.

Try to set up your curve to get the cleanest and sharpest edges possible by removing the majority of the soft background color. Keep in mind that the white areas will be transparent to the brush:

3. Specifying the Brush Tip

Now that we have our image ready we can do further editing, so let's start by selecting the are we want to use as the final brush.

4. Adjusting the Source (Brightness and Contrast)

To get back some of the sharpness in the grain of the texture let's adjust the brightness and contrast a little bit. Set the value of the brightness to 43 and in the contrast to +53.

5. Defining the Brush Tip

If you are satisfied with the current state of your image you are now ready to create your new Brush tip. Go to Edit>Define Brush.

6. Saving the Brush Tip

A small window will appear where you can enter the name for your new tip. We will use "7bulletholes" and click ok.

That's it you have now created a new Brush tip, but this is only a small part of the power of brushes, we will cover brushes in further detail on a later tutorial.